All About Poetry Alive!®

What Poetry Alive!® Is

Founded in 1984, POETRY ALIVE! fields groups of two-person
teams who travel to school districts worldwide. Their high-energy
presentations have taken Poetry Alive! to a total audience of more
than 10 million, in all 50 states as well as the District of Columbia,
Argentina, the Bahamas, Brazil, Canada, China, Ethiopia, Guam, Japan, Peru, Puerto Rico, Saipan, South Korea, Switzerland, Turkey, and Venezuela.

Each year Poetry Alive! conducts approximately 2,000 performances,
over 750 classroom follow-ups and 150 teacher workshops for an estimated
600,000 students nationwide. We also conduct several specialized
on-site in-services of one to five days each year.

Not a canned, ‘cookie-cutter’ event, Poetry Alive!’s performance
techniques are fresh and focused on connecting students to text. Poetry Alive!
techniques can easily be customized to emphasize reading, writing
or performance.

WHAT IS UNIQUE ABOUT POETRY ALIVE?

We are a Poetry Company. Using the rich heritage of the bardic
tradition of long ago, we bring high-intensity poetry performances
into the classroom. The Poetry Alive! actors have memorized
hundreds of poems—from the classics to the popular to the contemporary.

Those poems, presented in engaging and memorable ways, become the
connection to enhanced reading and writing skills. In short,
we bring poetry to life, by engaging students to the learning process. Poetry
Alive! has become the reading, writing and performing connection.

POETRY ALIVE! IS FLEXIBLE

Poetry Alive! techniques are easily taught and easily replicated by educators. Almost
any educator can learn them. Almost any student, regardless
of skill or socioeconomic background can benefit.

POETRY ALIVE! IS CUSTOMIZABLE

Our poetry performances can be tailored to many key educational
strategies and needs. For example, we can easily modify our
program to struggling readers, emergent readers or students who have
undeveloped writing skills.

POETRY ALIVE! IS CROSS CURRICULUM

Performance poetry works best in reading and writing applications. But
we have gym teachers and math teachers who have used our techniques
to improve student performance. We find our poetry performance
works in all curriculums because it utilizes kinesthetic learning
techniques.

POETRY ALIVE! HELPS ENSURE THAT NO CHILD IS LEFT BEHIND

Because Poetry Alive! utilizes Kinesthetic learning, students of all ages and
skill levels can self-actualize skills to improve literacy. Kids
of any skill level or background can benefit. Poetry Alive!
stimulates literacy among all sorts of achievement and interest levels.